Road Ahead: Region plays games with transit costs

Regional council is considering hiking property taxes by up to five per cent but at least rail transit is free. Even better — taxpayers are getting money back.

This is of course not true. Yet it’s how budget documents oddly portray the $818-million transit expansion.

In approving rail transit, council directed bureaucrats to apply annual welfare and mortgage savings against the transit tax increase. This was a political decision to assure people the bills can be paid. It looks like misdirection to mask the true cost.

In 2013, the province is assuming some welfare costs and council is retiring some mortgages on buildings. Local taxpayers will see $6 million in savings. Paying for rail transit will cost local taxpayers $5.3 million. Bureaucrats have applied savings against costs in budget documents as directed. Rail transit is thus presented as a net savings (a cost reduction) of $700,000.

It’s silly and head-scratching. The draft budget now shows $3.5 million in new debt costs that can’t logically be funded with retired mortgage debt because retired debt is applied against transit. It now shows $800,000 in new welfare costs that can’t logically be funded from welfare savings because welfare savings are applied against transit. And transit expansion is illogically presented as a money-maker.

Don’t be fooled. Expanding transit costs what it costs. By 2013, the average home will have paid $129 over three years to launch trains in 2017 and expand regular bus service. Bills will keep mounting.

What’s concerning is not the clumsiness of the budget presentation but the fact that council feels it has to play with numbers. It’s a reminder that rail transit is a leap of faith, hatched despite underwhelming cost-benefit findings and funded by senior governments that have kept internal assessments secret while practising high politics behind closed doors.

Remember that most municipal candidates would not stand behind the rail transit plan when seeking election in 2010. They endorsed it once safely in office. Now that it’s moving forward as a public-private partnership, expect more secrecy and obfuscation.

Will we be able to track the true costs, successes and failures of rail transit? It’s an open question, given how reluctant politicians are to stand behind their decisions and present them with clarity.